Country House Progress In The Kitchen

Hi, Dear Friends,

How are you? Thank you for stopping in to see what is going on in the kitchen at our little country house.  

To see where we have been with this house, check out our Country House Page. You will find links to all of the blog posts in this series. I hope you are enjoying our country home journey. 

What do I love in a kitchen? 

White cabinets

Anything vintage

Classic Hardware

Custom carpentry touches 

European flavor 

We're on our way with this kitchen.

I started giving the kitchen my full attention after Christmas. 

We removed a row of uppers and the plastic backsplash the first weekend we were in the house. 

 Bill added new lighting to brighten things up. I added farmhouse inspired accessories. 

I painted the window trim. The curtains came from Walmart. 

I put up a faux tin backsplash behind the sink as it was necessary. You can get faux tin at Home Depot but I had a piece that I thrifted and one that was left over from my mother in law's kitchen. I white washed it for this kitchen. 

I looked at images of kitchens with stained cabinets. 

I loved what I saw on Pinterest but our cabinets were not of that caliber. 

Bill liked them. I thought I could live with them but the kitchen just wasn't me. It was dark. 

I didn't want to paint them because I was sick of painting but I knew it was what needed to be done.  I started painting them a few days after Christmas. I was out at the house alone waiting for our bed. It was the perfect time. 

I worked for 12 hours on Monday. I touched up and did the toe kicks the next day. 

Once the painting was done, the cabinets looked better but they looked unfinished. 

They needed pulls and knobs. 

Collecting these was a challenge. Our covid numbers in Texas are very high so I don't feel comfortable getting out and about but I made a quick trip to Lowes and Home Depot. I didn't stay long enough at either to pick out exactly what I wanted. What I purchased ended up in Bill's bathroom. I need time to stand, look and mull things over but that's not possible right now. 

Hobby Lobby had the cutest vintage inspired knobs but they didn't have enough. They didn't have them on the website either. However, I thought they had that 1930 farmhouse looks so I bought what they had, hoping they would get more. They worked for the large pairs of upper doors and I love them. The pantry got coordinating crystal. The small uppers got a small, white and silver distressed knob. All of them came from Hobby Lobby. 

Ebay came to the rescue with a style of pull for the lower doors. Done!

Cup pulls that I ordered for the drawers were a fail. They were too chunky but there were 11 pulls in the guest house. We have 10 big drawers so I raided the guest house. They coordinate well with the door pulls. 

It's a mystery why the guest house had pulls and the main house did not. 

In all, I was able to get pulls and knobs on every door and drawer. The brushed nickel combined with the crystal have a classic and vintage look. I'm okay that it doesn't all match exactly. There is variation and interest. Don't get me wrong, the placement makes sense.

The tiny junk drawers got some library card catalog inspired pulls that I'd had in my stash but they were oil rubbed bronze. Some silver leaf Rub and Buff took care of the finish. I've had these for years hoping for a place for them. 

It took three weekends to get the pulls and knobs completed but it is finally done.  

As the project was drawing to a close, Hobby Lobby notified me that they got more knobs in stock.

 Ei, Yi, Yi. 

It was time to put some crown molding on top of the cabinets. Bill made quick work of that one Saturday afternoon. The crown molding made such a difference. They went from basic cabinets to higher end look. 

He also cut some cove molding for the floor at the back of the toe kicks. 

I thought that the left side needed a shelf to balance the coffee cabinet on the right. We had the wood left over from something we tore out of my bathroom. The brackets came from Hobby Lobby. For several weeks I'd been thinking about the pendant. It was bugging me. I finally broached the subject with Bill. He didn't like it either. Sometimes it looked like a circle, which we liked. From the other angle it looked like an oval. We didn't like the oval. It was only $7.50 at the Restore so we didn't have a problem picking out something new from Home Depot. The circle/oval fixture is now being used as a garden orb. 

Something was still off. The black brackets offered too much contrast so I painted them. 

White ironstone decorates the shelf. 

With some assistance from Bill, I added some beadboard to the side of the coffee cabinet, the peninsula, and the pantry. Bill overruled my desire for shiplap. The beadboard has the classic, cottage look that we both like. 

I wanted to be able to hang something on the side of the pantry. A towel bar wasn't what I had in mind so Bill made me a replica of a vintage hymnal holder. 

It will be painted or stained this coming weekend. Isn't he amazing? 

Except for one piece of cove molding that got overlooked somehow, we are finished with the kitchen for the time being. Counter tops, a sink and a faucet will be coming at some point. I can't wait. I knew that white cabinets would not coordinate well with the counters but we can live with it until we can get new ones. We'll also be getting a new electric stove so that we can get the propane tank removed. 

That is about it for now. 

This kitchen has a great layout. It's easy to use and keep clean. We love having the peninsula. 

The white paint has really brightened up the space and offered a look that I love. 

Bill likes it too. The kitchen looks bigger. 

 I'll be working on some brighter photos soon once the sun is out. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

Katie 

Dish Storage/Open Shelving

Good Afternoon!

We have dish storage.

I told you about our sad builder basic kitchen cabinet that was beginning to fall apart. 

It is hard to believe that ginormous thing was able to hang there but it's gone now. 

I kept the doors and hopefully we can repurpose them. 

I patched the texture on the wall with a combination of mud, paint and sand. This is what we used in '98 but back then, it came premixed.  

It creates a stucco look that has had amazing longevity. 

The wall needed to be touched up. 
Sadly, there was no original wallpaper back there. 
It would have been very time capsule-ish.  
This color is Kilim Beige by Sherwin Williams. It's the very pretty, buttery color my sister-in-law used it at their lake house. 
After pinning a ton of ideas,I headed up to Home Depot to get brackets and boards. 
I chose the same brackets used on this blog.

These brackets were a bear to hang.

They were very difficult to get level. Even creating a template of the back of the bracket didn't prove successful. I was very frustrated and tired by the time they were up I felt like a bear. 

I was exhausted and only did two shelves. 
You know when you work hard on something and then you're underwhelmed?

Well, that's what happened. Bill seemed underwhelmed too. 

He thought the bottom shelf was okay but the top shelf was a waste because it was staged with decorative stuff instead of dishes we need.
"What do we need that cow up there for?"
Um please?

"There have to be a few decorative things up there or it will look bad." 
FYI: Cow pitchers annoy spouses almost as much as pillows. 

These shelves were securely on the wall but it just didn't feel like it. 

So the peace of mind I expected with them didn't come. Dishes smashed all over the floor kept flashing around my brain. 
Dog gone it, Google!
The next morning after coffee, I got to work on the third shelf.

Notice the little cow pitcher got moved to the top shelf. 

A near disaster with a vent pipe from the sink was averted. 

Thank heavens the plumber was here installing a toilet. 

 Now it's in balance with the other cabinets and the vent hood. The decorative stuff we never use can go up on the third shelf.

These seemed a little insecure and bland so they got tweaked again yesterday morning. 

I added a board under each shelf to brace the units. 

Now they feel secure. 

The brace is drilled into the studs and the shelf is drilled down into the brace. 

The boards were reclaimed from another project that I did 20 years ago. I like the contrast of the natural boards and the white. 

But as I said on instagram, "It's fun for now because I'm too tired to paint."

About the time it was finished, Bill sent this text.
"Hope you're done "wreaking-renovating" our house and taking it easy!
I was.
This project was not on the agenda for this summer. 
I was missing the cabinet but this is cute and will be fun to style for the holidays.

Talk to you soon,
Katie  
I like to party at,
French Country Cottage    
A Stroll Thru Life  
Coastal Charm
 The Scoop  
Inspire Me Monday   
Savvy Southern Style

Kitchen Shelves Instead Of Our Big Cabinet

The night before we were supposed to leave town for 4th of July, I noticed that it looked like more of my cabinet was pulling away from the kitchen wall.

4th of July was wonderful by the way. 
The food was delicious! 
We had family float time. Several of us siblings and spouses just floated in the lake, talking.  It was heavenly once a few got over their fear of snakes. ;) So much fun!

I wish someone had gotten a picture of us on our floaties but alas not one picture.
 Maybe they don't trust me not to publish it on my blog. Haha.

 Anyway.

It was about six months ago that I first noticed the trim on the side of the cabinet was no longer snug against the wall. 

Several more screws drilled into the studs took care of the problem or so I thought. 

Nope. The problem wasn't with the screws going through the back into the wall studs. The problem was with the side of the cabinet splitting away from the back of the cabinet. 

You could see light coming through the cabinet between the side and the back. Eeek!

I drilled an angle bracket into the side and back to keep it secure while we were out of town. 

I was tempted to google "cabinets falling off of the wall" but images of china, glass and splintered cabinet all over the floor came to mind. 

Can you imagine?

I wouldn't have been able to sleep all weekend.

Pondering it while we were gone drew me to several conclusions. 

We could add corbels under the cabinet to give it more support and therefore stop the slow splitting but 
Mrs. Paranoid would check it obsessively.

We could rip it down, rebuild the box and put it back up.

We could get a new cabinet and paint it to match. 
The new cabinet could be a more modern height.
Finally, we could install open shelving. 

I kept coming back to the open shelving idea. 

Bill trusts our ability to keep it neat and organized after all my cabinet and pantry organization projects this past year. 

He doesn't trust me to not have 15 different types of china on the shelves. 

I promised to purge and to fill it with matching, white  china.

I'm getting all tingly at the idea of stacks of plates, bowls, platters etc. 

Yesterday I pinned, purged and took down the cabinet.

I unscrewed all the screws except the final screw. I lowered one end onto a stool and once the last screw was out I lowered the other end on to another stool. I got it down off of the counter by resting one end on the step ladder and then I lifted it down. 

The wall will need to be repaired behind the cabinet and then painted.

Hmmm. I kind of like how open it is.

This is the texture mixture.

All the sponge painting I did back in 1987 came in handy.
I used a paper towel and then a sponge to dab it on. 

I didn't rest until that beast was off of the wall.

This cabinet was 48 inches wide and had to weigh several hundred pounds. 
No wonder.
I'll keep you posted but right now I'm going to excuse myself and grieve the loss of my pretty white cabinet.

Katie   

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